Local officials, especially Democrats, have tried to leverage at least some of the windfall to address chronic social and economic problems that the coronavirus exacerbated.
After a series of community meetings in Detroit, Mayor Mike Duggan and the City Council opted for a plan that divided the city’s $826 million payout roughly in half, with about $400 million going to recoup Covid-19 losses, and $426 million to an array of job-creation programs, grants for home repairs and funding to revitalize blighted neighborhoods.
In Philadelphia, officials are considering using $18 million of the new aid to test a “universal basic income” pilot program to help poor people. That is among the uses specifically suggested in the administration’s guidance. Several other big cities, including Chicago, are considering similar plans.
The Cherokee Nation, which is receiving $1.8 billion of the $20 billion set aside for tribal governments, is replicating the law’s signature initiative — direct cash payments to citizens — by sending $2,000 checks to around 400,000 members of the tribe in multiple states.
The $350 billion program has led to legal battles, with officials in many Republican-led states fighting one of the few restrictions placed on use of the money, a prohibition against deploying it to subsidize tax cuts, and partisan clashes erupting over which projects should have been given priority.
And the cash has spawned partisan conflict. Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, a Republican, announced this month that the state would use only a fraction of the approximately $1 billion it was expected to receive on emergency expenditures this year, and would discuss how to use the rest.
“These are dollars borrowed by Congress from many generations yet to come,” he said in a statement this spring.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/06/us/politics/stimulus-bill-usa.html
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